Months later, another casting director reached out to Hall, asking if she knew anyone who might fit the bill for an upcoming show about teenage pregnancy. She suggested 17-year-old Amber, who was newly pregnant by Shawn's former friend, Gary.
Amber's long, storied history with MTV began - as all the girls' did - with a simple questionnaire. “Then you have to film a day in the life of yourself and include your family and your boyfriend/girlfriend,” season three's Danielle Cunningham explains. “If you make it that far and they're still interested in you then they send out a test shooter and see how you act on camera. [There are] quite a few steps, like five...You have to take a personality test, meet with a counselor who makes sure you're not crazy. There is a background check and then you meet with producers after you are chosen.”
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“I knew it would ruin her life. I wish Amber would have had the same mentality as me [and turned MTV down].”
- SHAWN PORTWOOD
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Shawn - who had been away on deployment to Iraq while the casting process played out in his home - was furious with Amber for going through the entire process and agreeing to participate on the new show. “I knew it would ruin her life,” he wrote. “I wish Amber would have had the same mentality as me [and turned MTV down.]” But she didn't.
Neither did 16 year-old Whitney Purvis, who was living in tight quarters with her grandmother, and mother - who was also pregnant - in Rome, Georgia when she was cast. Purvis said films like “Juno” made pregnancy look “cute” and wanted to show the unfiltered reality of being irresponsible in the bedroom. “You know you don't have to have sex,” she told ABC News. “(But) if you do, be smart because this is what happens.”
Producers - eager to explore what happens when girls decide to give their babies up for adoption - also reached out to Bethany Christian Services, a faith-based adoption agency in Grand Rapids, Michigan. There, they discovered Catelynn, a 16-year-old from nearby Algonac, who was considering placing her baby up for adoption. Catelynn submitted the mandatory audition video, much to the shock of Brandon and Theresa Davis - the North Carolina couple that she (and boyfriend Tyler, 16) had already selected to adopt their baby. Though initially nervous to be a part of the series, the couple eventually agreed to allow the adoption process to be filmed.
Q: Did the producers ever try to get you to talk about certain things?
They never told me what to say, just what to talk about. They just wanted me to help catch people up. But there were times I didn't want to talk about certain things, like when Ryan showed up with a hickey on his neck to Miah's birth. I didn't want to talk about that at all and they made me.
Q: Were you allowed to stop them from filming if something was happening that you didn't want shown on TV?
They said they wouldn't put whatever we didn't want [shown] in. But during the “Where Are They Now” special I told them not to show the part where my mom and I are arguing [but they still did.]
Q: How many MTV crewmembers were in the room with you at the hospital while you were giving birth? Did the hospital give them any problems?
One, and they weren't allowed in until I said it was OK. Before the epidural I was feeling really bad. [The hospital didn't give us] any trouble, but I was told I was one of the last births they got to film.
Q: What was your filming schedule like?
They came at like 8 AM and we would film everywhere the director said we needed to. They would leave at like 10 p.m. They came like once a month, and then like three times a month around the end of filming. They would film for about 13 hours a day.
Q: Did you have to call the producers when it was time for the birth and other major events?
Yes, we would call them. If they couldn't fly straight down from New York fast enough, we would film ourselves with a Flip cam. For labor, they stay in a hotel nearby for the two weeks before you're due so they can rush right over when it's time.
Q: What was the downside of exposing your life like this? Do you regret doing the show?
The downside was for sure the negative feedback I get from people. I hate that everyone in the world knows my personal business. I can't even have a Twitter and tweet what I want to tweet because so many people judge.... I try not to regret anything but [I] kind of [do regret it.] But I would still do it all over again, just differently.”
Q: What didn't we see on TV that happened during this time?
A lot! A lot of drama, crying, fights…plus I worked full time while 9 months pregnant. They didn't show any of that which pissed me the hell off.
Q: What were the best and worst parts of your experience?
The best part was that it was basically the chance of a lifetime. I mean, I've been asked for my autograph, how freaking sweet is that? I also gained a new family. I miss my camera crew. The worst parts were that they controlled my life way too much. It was ALL about MTV. They scratched the hardwood floor my dad had just put down with their equipment and didn't care. One time I was in pre-term labor but they wouldn't let my mom take me to the hospital until they got the car lighting just right. It was bullshit!
Kailyn Lowry was fuming as she watched the second season finale of Teen Mom 2. The most quiet and conservative of the show's four young mothers says she was ready to quit when producers edited footage to make it appear that she and ex-boyfriend Jo Rivera had hooked up for a soap-filled romp in the shower!
“MTV wasn't there [when Jo and I hooked up] but they tried to play it like they were,” Kail tells us. “They had us reenact it. The scene where I tell Jordan about cheating on him was reenacted. That's why I was so coldhearted. Jordan already knew about it at that time, and we had already moved past it, but they made us reenact it and live through it again, and then again when it aired. It really upset Jordan. We had broken up and had gotten back together. Jordan had no choice but to do it because he was under contract, too. There was a point that I wanted to quit and rip up my contract because of the way they treated me.”
Like many of the MTV girls, Kail agreed to share her very personal story because she was sold on the “documentary” style of series. Her day-to-day interactions - and the struggle of raising son Isaac on her own - would be portrayed to viewers exactly as they unfolded, she believed. Wrong! What the heavily tattooed 20 year-old didn't realize was that both 16 and Pregnant and the Teen Mom franchises are carefully crafted by a team of directors, editors and producers, who ultimately shape each girl's on-screen persona and decide how their individual stories will play out on TV.
“They just beefed it up with drama,” says Sabrina Solares, who appeared on the fourth season of 16 and Pregnant. “I don't want to show my daughter Audrey [the episode]. I just wish they showed [the good stuff] rather than the drama.”
Danielle Cunningham, a fan favorite from season three says producers would purposely instigate conflict during the filming process, in hopes of capturing dramatic blowups with boyfriend, Jamie Alderman, on camera. “They would tell us to talk about touchy subjects that would cause us to fight,” the Ohio teen tells us.
Whitney Purvis, one of six girls featured during season one, told a similar story to ABC News in 2009. “They would take you in separate rooms and then they would film me with my friends and my boyfriend with his friends and just get you to talk about the things you don't like about each other,” she said. “They want you to argue. They want you to talk about each other. They want you to get where you want to break up with each other to go stay at separate places. I just didn't like that at all.”
Neither did season three's Cleondra Carter, who claims footage in her installment of 16 and Pregnant was purposely pieced together to make her boyfriend, Mario Escovedo, “look like an asshole.” Of course, she concedes, “during some of the filming it was him who was making himself look like an asshole!”
The filming process was “emotional and exhausting” says Katie Stack, one of three teens featured in the 2010 special “No Easy Dec
ision,” which featured 16 and Pregnant season two's Markai Durham as she contemplated having an abortion. “The actual staff and crew of MTV were amazingly supportive,” Stack tells us. “They really went above and beyond to make sure that we felt supported through the process - even coming to our hometowns to let us see the show before it aired, so we could be prepared. I've maintained relationships with many of them.”
Still, Cleondra says, nothing was off limits once cameras started rolling. “They made us film EVERYTHING!” she says. “You could never get out of it. I remember when I did not want them to film when Mario and I were at Sekesui [a restaurant in Memphis] and we got into that argument.” While MTV team members never put exact words in her mouth, she says “they would just get things out of us that we would seriously never have talked about. They were like counselors with cameras.”
Other girls say the often eight-member production crew was more like paparazzi. Danielle, just 16 when she became pregnant with son Jamie during junior year, says it was an ongoing struggle to shield her friends and family from overly-invasive cameras during personal, private moments. “[My ex-boyfriend Jamie's] dad got evicted and I refused to let them film it,” she says. Danielle also contends MTV crews tried to get a little too up-close-and-personal while shadowing her in the fall of 2010. “I refused to let them film me pumping milk,” she remembers. “I felt that it was an invasion of privacy. They actually begged me to let them film it. They were very forceful. They would say things like, 'This is your story so let us film what's really going on!'”
Capturing each girl's story is a full time job that usually begins around the fourth or fifth month of pregnancy. Each girl is assigned a director, producer and camera crew to trail her up to 13 hours a day for approximately one week each month. “It's one of the worst jobs I've had,” one former camera operator posted during a bombshell August 2012 Q&A chat on Reddit.com. “Opticalsk” - whose identity we have agreed not to disclose - also revealed several other interesting tidbits about what goes on behind the scenes:
* Members of the production staff must remain completely removed from the action - even in situations where babies could be in harm's way.
“As a camera operator i'm not allowed to interfere. legally can't even hold the babys. the producer/director's would interfere and shape the 'story'.” [sic]
* Conditions inside the girls' homes are often dirty and disgusting.
“Every shoot i would want to call CPS. filthy houses (dog poop on the floor, bloody tampons sitting in a corner for months, weeks old food everywhere, etc) one of the worst is Leah (Messer), filthiest person i've met. when feeding her twins she would spill a bunch of cheese puffs on the nasty carpet and the girls would crawl around and suck up the cheese puffs, no hands involved. this made me cry a few times.” [sic]
* The production company has a policy in place for when abuse or neglect is suspected - but nobody follows it.
“[The] rule was to file your complaint with production manager. if the production manager felt that they were legally bound to submit the complaint to the authorities they would. of course they never did. it took a lot of alcohol to fall asleep. i couldn't take it half way through the 3rd season and quit.” [sic]
* Some members of the film crew would try to party with pals of the girls they were filming.
“One crew member was caught in the hot tub at our hotel with one of the girls friends. He was promptly fired. She asked for his age. He was 38. She started screaming and *beep* hit the fan. He is bald and always wears a cap. Looks young with the cap. In the tub he took it off. She was like WTF!”
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“It gets to the point where the director is feeding them lines.”
- FORMER TEEN MOM CAMERAMAN
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The veteran cameraman also confirmed multiple reports that episodes of both shows are “heavily scripted.” “It gets to the point where the director is feeding them lines,” he said. In some cases, entire scenes are set-up and inserted to speed up or fill in blanks during the story telling process. “They recreated key things like walking up and down stairs, in and out of doors,” says Jamie McKay, who shared her experience of welcoming daughter Miah during season three of 16 and Pregnant. “They made [my boyfriend] Ryan go back to the hospital and recreate going inside.”
“One part in my episode where [Mario] was in a red hoodie and he was throwing the ball back and forth with the dog was SO FAKE!” Cleondra adds. “I understand their concept of how it was already hard to get him over to my house, but that was just crucial. I had no idea about it and I was mad as hell when Mario told me. After they finished that scene, he walked over to my house and was like 'Don't be mad, they told me to say that.' I was like 'Wow!'”
It turns out Cleondra's episode wasn't the only one with re-enacted or completely fabricated content. In the summer of 2011, 23 year-old Daniel Alvarez, a recent college graduate from Austin, Texas, briefly dated new mom Farrah Abraham after she relocated to Florida. Their six-week courtship was documented and shown over the course of several episodes during the final season of Teen Mom. “The day they filmed me 'meeting' [Farrah's daughter] Sophia, I had to pretend like I had just met her, even though I had already met her and hung out with her,” he confesses. “They needed to get it on film. They also made us do things like say we were on our second date and pretend we were just meeting again even though we had been dating for awhile already...”
Alvarez, who provides marketing and brand recognition services for a company in Austin, says producers staged numerous other events, including his introduction to Farrah's mother, a horseback riding date (“I didn't really want to go because I don't like horseback riding, but they wanted to get us dating on film”) and a July 4th fireworks outing. (“It was weird with the people from the show there. They would make us do things over and over again so they could get the shot they needed.”)
Still, there were some moments producers only got one crack at. In each episode of 16 and Pregnant, the money shot was the birth of each child. Film crews would hunker down at a nearby hotel beginning two weeks before the projected due date and the girls were under strict orders to call their main producer the moment they went into labor. “[The crew] had just left my house probably like four to five days before,” Cleondra remembers. “I was blowing up my director, Allison's phone. I went into labor at 1 in the morning and she probably did not answer until around 5 AM. They got on the plane after that. As soon as she made it to the hospital, [my daughter] Kylee was coming. After she came in the room to say 'hey,' I began to push.”
As Cleondra recalls, the MTV crew “had the hardest time getting clearance” to film at the hospital. “They never got it, actually,” she admits. Instead the episode's director had to pretend to be a family member to gain access to the delivery room. Producers ran into the same problem in season two with Florida teen Nicole Fokos. “They had to sneak little Flip cameras in there,” Nicole remembers. “They got caught with that, too. [The hospital] started threatening everybody that they were going to call security. My mom was like 'This is her cousin. He's just filming it.' But they didn't believe it.”
Most of the show's participants have remained quiet about their experiences - until now - because of intimidating confidentiality agreements they are required to sign with producers and the network. MTV has been notorious for the way it has exploited reality show contestants for more than two decades. In 2011, the Village Voice dropped a bombshell on the former music channel by exposing the 25 page agreement signed by each house member featured on another reality show, The Real World. Among the stipulations:
* You may be humiliated and intentionally portrayed “in a false light.”
* Producers can make any changes they want to your life story.
* Camera crews can show up to your home at any time to film and may take anything they want -- as long as it gets returned once production has ended.
Terms for the participants on 16 and Pregn
ant and Teen Mom - which are produced by 11th Street Productions, but still in close conjunction with MTV - are equally restrictive. Several of the girls tell us they are forbidden to make drastic changes to their personal appearance, including hair color and style. On occasions where a “new look” cannot be worked into the show, some girls have been forced to wear wigs and hats.
“If they need to film a pick up, which is when they weren't there for certain things and they need to go back in time [and restage what happened] sometimes they have to get creative to make it look like no time has passed,” one insider says.
Producers reportedly panicked when Jenelle (following the lead of Maci and Farrah) decided to get a boob job in the summer of 2012. Possibly sensing the backlash the show would receive if all of its “struggling” young stars were able to afford pricey cosmetic procedures, producers sent the word out that plastic surgery was strictly off-limits until after the series ended.
The biggest - and most problematic - stipulation for many of the girls: social media postings are strictly monitored and no one is permitted to talk to the media without an MTV representative present or on the phone. Anyone who violates the gag order is subject to a fine of up to $1 million, several girls have said.
But that hasn't stopped some former cast and crewmembers from opening up about their experiences participating on the show. “We get in trouble all the time for what we post on Twitter,” one cast member says. Predictably, 18 year-old Megan McConnell received an immediate order to remove the following 2011 post from her personal blog, which details how she say producers bullied her into reading “a bunch of lies” during the narration for her episode of 16 and Pregnant:
Teen Mom Confidential: Secrets & Scandals From MTV's Most Controversial Shows Page 3